The High Intensity Discharge (HID) headlight system, utilizing a Xenon Metal Halide lamp, has become increasingly popular due to its substantially superior luminous efficacy, measured in Lumens per Watt, as compared with a conventional Halogen headlight. The typical HID car headlamp consumes 35 Watts of electrical power. The HID lamp, however, unlike the Halogen lamp, is a discharge lamp, which requires an electronic ballast to ignite and operate it. The size, complexity and therefore cost of such ballasts has been a limiting factor in the adoption of HID headlights. An ideal solution would be to produce a ballast small enough to fit inside a headlight housing, having a low cost and high efficiency.